


frostbite

by theflyjar



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Cold Weather, Confessions, Fluff, Love Confessions, M/M, Mutual Pining, Snow, Unrequited Crush, Unrequited Love, Winter, first snow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-29
Updated: 2018-12-29
Packaged: 2019-09-20 11:24:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17021775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theflyjar/pseuds/theflyjar
Summary: Yixing thinks that, if he were to touch Yifan, his fingers would turn black with frostbite.





	frostbite

**Author's Note:**

> **Prompt Leaf:** #13  
>  **Author's Note:** thank you to the mods who ran this fest.

The first time Yixing sees snow, it’s perfect.

It falls like icing sugar, dusting the tops of everything as if they’re sweet pastries, and he removes his gloves to run his fingers through it. There’s only him on the street that early in the morning, long before the sun rises to start the daylight hours and well past when Yixing should have gone to sleep.

He cannot sleep, though. It evades him each time he closes his eyes until he rolls over restlessly under his duvet, tangling himself up in the sheets and growing frustrated with himself. He had thought the sun had risen already, given the brightness outside, but he was mistaken. For, unbeknownst to him, the world brightens, even in the darkest moments of the night, when snow falls. The snow clouds swirl up in the sky like a halo, glowing with a cold light.

That’s what draws him out onto the street in his nightwear, thick winter coat, flimsy sneakers, scarf, and gloves. He stares up and around him in wonder, marvelling at the snowglobe scene he’s in.

He trails his fingers along the tops of cars, streaking through the icy, white layer of snow and leaving behind shallow, wet trenches. When he’s a few blocks away from his aunt’s home, he turns left at the end of one of the streets to circle back on himself. He starts to run then, laughing to himself with every hit his feet make on the floor and stops when he hears a loud clattering sound off to somewhere on his right. He stops dead in his tracks, glancing to see if he can see anyone else out of their apartments.

There’s another of those sounds, loud and thundering through the silent night without Yixing’s laughter to drown it out a little. Yixing recognises it now that he’s listening out for it. It’s the unmistakable sound of a basketball hitting the backboard of a hoop, the rattling metal of the net jingling along with the initial hit.

Slowly and quietly, Yixing heads toward the basketball courts he knows are tucked in behind the next corner. He catches sight of one person playing, in sweatpants and a basketball jersey, on their own. It’s a man, that much Yixing can tell, and he suspects he’s quite a bit older than Yixing, given his height and the control he has of the ball when he moves. Still, even in the falling snow during the frozen cold of the night, the man doesn’t seem to mind that he has nothing to really protect him from the elements. Yixing has his coat and he’s pretty warm from his small sprinting outburst down the road, his gloves still aren’t on his hands, and his scarf is bunched up at his neck.

It doesn’t take Yixing a moment to unravel the long woolen scarf from around his throat and do his coat up to the very top to accommodate the loss. He holds the scarf along with his gloves, slowly approaching the man and letting out a small, “Excuse me?”

The man twirls in a jolt on his feet, ball held between two hands, eyes wide and bewildered as he stares Yixing down.

Everything about him appears cold, from his expression to the colour of his lips. The latter is what doesn’t deter Yixing from holding out the things in his hands and taking tentative steps closer to the other man.

“I thought you might be cold, so I didn’t know if you’d like to use these?”

The man says nothing but continues to stare, a shiver running down Yixing’s spine - and it’s not the creeping cold of winter that caused it. So, he turns away, trudging through the thickening snow and over to a bench. Beneath the bench, the snow has not yet touched the ground, leaving it dry but frozen to the touch, and he deposits the scarf and gloves there.

“You don’t have to take them, but just in case you want them, they’re here.”

In the silence, Yixing turns back to head out of the courts and once he rounds the corner to head back to his own house, he starts running again and doesn’t stop until he’s outside of his apartment building.

 

❅❅❅

 

No one quite understands the dynamic between Yixing and Wu Yifan.

Lu Han and Yixing make sense, though. They’re so similar and familiar with one another that anyone else taking the title of _Best Friend_ wouldn’t feel _right._ They chatter, giggle, and clammer over one another as if they’re permanently conjoined.And yet, Yixing always talks of his two best friends. Of Lu Han _and_ Yifan.

Even Lu Han, with his closeness and understanding of Yixing, does not quite know how Yixing and Yifan work. Yixing’s warm and overflowing with things to give, to spread a balmy, honeying sensation between everyone he’s around. Yifan, however, is the cool hand that freezes over conversations and sits like some kind of ice prince on his frosted throne of pride and pretension.

Yixing, though, Yixing gets it.

There’s a feeling he has when he’s with Yifan, the kind of comfort that comes with being able to be yourself. And, it’s only around Yifan that Yixing gets to feel the same sensation Yixing supposedly gives to everyone else. With Yifan, Yixing feels as though the sun is inside of him.

It took Yixing four months to realise he was in love with Yifan after their first meeting. Yixing thinks they met in a music history class in his first year of university. Yixing thinks that it was only by chance that he was partnered up with Yifan to do a project on the histories and technicalities of music from the Ming dynasty. Yixing doesn’t realise that the first time he’d greeted snow was also the first time he’d greeted Yifan.

Like everyone else at the university, Yixing was convinced that Yifan’s cold demeanour was bone deep, not something superficial. But, then, in private, when Yixing lets some dumb comment slip through his lips about how ridiculous it would be to play a Qin on top of a mountain, he sees Yifan smile. It thawed through everything Yixing thought Yifan was. Instead, Yixing could only think of frostbite, something so cold that it _burns._

 

❅❅❅

 

Yixing sits in Yifan’s dorm room, quietly tapping away on his laptop’s keyboard to finish an assignment before settling down for winter break. Lu Han’s travelled to see his parents, leaving Yixing alone in their room, and Yifan has the luck of not having a roommate at all. Yixing invited himself over to stay with Yifan, as neither of them were making the trip back down to their respective homes in the south. Not being alone over the lonely winter period is the excuse that spilt from Yixing when he lugged his small suitcase behind him and Yifan frowned, eyebrows drawing in before he let Yixing into the dorm room. Yifan sighs, Yixing can hear it, when Yixing kicks off his converses and crawls under Yifan’s duvet.

It’s warm and inviting beneath the comforter, signalling that Yifan had been cooped up under there doing whatever on his iPad. Yixing sets up camp immediately, drawing out snacks and drinks for them both, as well as his laptop to begin his final piece of coursework for the term.

Like always, which is something Yixing has learnt, Yifan relents easily when Yixing smiles at him. It’s the perk of being the best friend, Yixing is fully aware. But when Yifan smiles back, gummy and sincere, Yixing’s heart flutters around in his chest like a butterfly caught in a net. It only worsens when Yifan gets under the comforter, too, reclining to start watching the video he’d left to answer the door.

The gentle noises of audiences cheering and laughing, along with the frequent snorts of amusement are the soundtrack to Yixing’s studying. Even as the world dims outside and Yifan switches between television shows, Yixing observes him every so often. Yifan’s appearance truly is a cold one, his eyebrows pitch inwards, his eyes sat shadowed beneath them, and his taught mouth drawn in by small plump lips. He’d be terrifying if he ever actually tried to be threatening, Yixing thinks, especially with how the darkness of the evening’s shadows cast over his face. But Yixing can sense it and feel this indescribable heat when Yifan catches him looking, when their eyes meet in onyx glints and teeth glimmer like little stars when they smile at one another.

Yixing knows he’s in love. He doesn’t even mind if it’s not reciprocated, not when Yifan pats his chest, leaving it open to be a pillow, after Yixing’s shut down his own laptop. Their closeness, whilst maybe not the kind Yixing would want, is enough for now. He can content himself, as he has for the last year, cuddled up next to Yifan as they binge watch film after film or show after show.

It’s normal now, for Yixing to fall asleep pressed up to Yifan’s side on Yifan’s single mattress, and he doesn’t mind the aches in his back and neck when he rouses in the morning. No, because it’s like this Yixing feels his heart blacken from the burning frostbite his love for Yifan leaves behind.

 

❅❅❅

 

The second time Yixing sees snow, it’s far more perfect than it was before.

The first snow comes quite late in the season, when it’s only the skeleton of a student body in on the campus grounds, but Yixing runs out in only his lounge shorts and t-shirt. He twirls around in the snowflakes of the mid-afternoon, laughing so loudly it echoes off the front of the building, and Yifan’s head pops out from his bedroom window.

“Ge!” he yells up, “It’s snowing!”

Yifan rolls his eyes and feeds Yixing with a snarky response, “I can see that.”

“Come down here, spend the first snow with me,” Yixing tries to coax, opening his arms to continue with his spinning.

Yifan appears a short while later, brandishing a hoody towards Yixing and forcing him into it. There’s less excitement swirling through Yifan, which leads to Yixing whining and trying to convince him to have fun in the snow, too.

Yixing’s well aware that Yifan’s most likely far more used to snow than Yixing is, given time spent in Canada when was growing up, but Yixing doesn’t care much for that. He simply wants to see Yifan’s smile light up the world around him, like the snow-filled clouds do, and he gets just that when he grabs Yifan’s hand to drag him through the wet snow drift.

There’s nothing else other than laughter by the time they’ve dashed partway across campus, near to a section surrounded by trees, only stopping when their shoes are soaked through and Yixing’s skin prickles with the cold on his legs.

The cold doesn’t matter, though. Not when Yifan’s right there, gazing down at him, iciness catching Yixing’s insides until it scorches him to the third degree. It hurts so badly that it feels like everything’s numbed, from Yixing’s sodden toes to his pinked ears, and Yixing wished this was his first ever time seeing snow. He wishes he could have shared this moment of pure discovery and beauty with Yifan.

“Come on, you’re shivering,” Yifan comments once Yixing’s trailed his fingers across the tops of leaves to dislodge the snow from them. “Let’s go have a shower.”

Yixing agrees, allowing Yifan to wrap his arms around Yixing’s waist and lead them back towards Yifan’s dorm building. The snow is too wet and thin to crunch, so it slushes around beneath the soles of their shoes and Yixing is thankful when he can finally peel off soaked through socks, leant against the wall just outside of Yifan’s dorm room. Yifan moves faster than he does and is holding towels and a wash bag.

Ushered through the hallways, they end up at the shower block, stripping off and heading under shower heads. The first burst of water is freezing cold, causing Yixing to yelp and shudder away. The rumbling of Yifan’s laughter can be heard through their cubicle dividers. Yixing wants to tell Yifan to shut up but the water warms quickly, enticing Yixing beneath the spray to thaw his body through. Yifan passes through the shampoo, conditioner, and shower gel to Yixing, who cleans himself and stays beneath the water whilst he listens to Yifan shuffle around the bathroom.

“Come on, Xing,” Yifan uses a coaxing voice, “the quicker you come out, the quicker we can get something warm to eat.”

Yixing only actually emerges when Yifan’s hand appears around the shower curtain, wiggling one of the soft, cotton towels. They dry themselves and head back to Yifan’s dorm with towels around their waists, clutching their wet clothing to their chests, silently meandering through.

They dress warmly before heading down the stairs to the front door, to drift down to the communal kitchen area and knock something up together with the abundance of instant noodles and some eggs. Yixing hums along to a tune in his head and Yifan bobs his head, piling the mushrooms that have rehydrated in his instant noodles.

It’s quiet, warm, and delicate under the golden fluorescent lighting. It remains like that until they scramble up to bed, piling onto Yifan’s mattress and falling asleep. Dreamlike and safe.

 

❅❅❅

 

The next morning, Yixing dresses to head to the closest subway station to meet his aunt in the city. He doesn’t have a scarf or gloves, and settles for nabbing one of Yifan’s sweaters that cover down over his hands and some fresh jeans from the bag he’d brought along with him. He shouts goodbye to Yifan, who sits on his bed throwing a basketball up in the air.

However, when Yixing’s just about to close the entry door to Yifan’s dorm building behind him, he hears his name and the thundering of feet on the stairway.

“Yixing!”

He waits, wondering why Yifan’s running after him — he as his phone, keys, and subway card, so he cannot think of anything else he’d require to take along with him. Standing there, the arctic breeze nips at his fingers to blanche him through. His teeth are chattering when Yifan appears at the bottom of the stairs.

However, when Yifan gets there, he’s holding something in his hand, and a glimmering sweat breaks out on Yifan’s brow.

Yixing tilts his head to the side. “Ge?”

“I, uh,” Yifan fumbles after his words, “I told myself I would do this if I ever saw you during the first snow again…”

 _Again?_ Yixing thinks.

Yifan’s hands thrust outwards, “I wanted to return these to you, after you gave them to me that night. And, I’ve been telling myself that, maybe giving these back to you would give me the courage to confess to you… About this feeling that I get inside when I see you smile, how _happy_ it makes me to see you happy and how _powerless_ it makes me feel whenever you’re sad.”

Yifan clenches his eyes together, cracking through the ice that usually coats over his face. Yixing reaches out to smooth over Yifan’s brow, only to have his fingers caught and brought to Yifan’s mouth.

“I’m sorry that I love you,” Yifan whispers regretfully, kissing the tips of Yixing’s fingers to warm them.

Yixing doesn’t know where he finds the words to say, “Love me with no remorse… Because I love you, too.”

And in that moment, under the bright light of Yifan’s smile, Yixing succumbs to the raw heat of frostbite on his heart.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! please, read the other fics in this fest, too!


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